Oligarchy"You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy, but you cannot have both." Louis Brandeis " It has been true all through history, the way you get a small group of people to be very rich is by getting a lot of other people to be very poor." Michael Parenti As more and more wealth concentrates at the top, the moneyed interests rationally fear that democratic majorities will take it away through higher taxes, stricter regulations (on everything from trade to climate change), enforcement of anti-monopoly laws, pro-union initiatives and price controls. So they’re sinking ever more of their wealth into anti-democracy candidates. Donald Trump is going full fascist these days and gaining the backing of prominent billionaires. It is baffling to me how supporters of President Trump can claim anti-elitism as a reason for voting for him. The combined wealth of the Trump family and administration cabinet members (Perdue, Ross, Chao, DeVos, Mnuchin, Carson, for example) is staggering. These are the people who make decisions that affect us every day, yet their wealth and elite status do not seem to concern Trump followers. Do these voters ever question the motives and actions of that elite group? Gail Minthorn, Wilton, Conn. (letter to the New York Times) In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule -- at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it. Gilens and Page “There is class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning” Warren Buffet A recent poll of the super-wealthy shows that compared with ordinary voters, the rich place a much higher priority on deficit reduction than on combating high unemployment. Their support for Social Security and Medicare is weaker than their compatriots, and they are opposed to the very tax changes most Americans support. Recent political science studies also suggest little or no responsiveness of political leaders to the opinions of the middle class when they conflict with the opinions of those at the top. Wealth concentrates because the return on capital tends to exceed the general rate of economic growth. Since income broadly tracks wealth, economies become relentlessly more unequal over time. Sarah Churchwell ... in her book Behold, America (2018). The first widely disseminated use of “American dream,” ... appeared in the New York Post in 1900. It was a warning about the threat posed by super-rich tycoons to the very existence of the American system of government. “Discontented multimillionaires,” it warned, form the “greatest risk” to “every republic.” All previous republics, it noted, had been “overthrown by rich men” and this could happen too in America, where the tycoons were “deriding the constitution, unrebuked by the executive or by public opinion.” If they had their way “it would be the end of the American dream.” ...The American republic has come close to being overthrown by a discontented multimillionaire. Biden failed to say with sufficient force that America needed not to go from nightmare to dream, but to wake up to the urgent meaning of that threat.” The New York Review of Books 12/3/2020 “Democracy’s Afterlife” Billionaires should not exist. Senator Bernie Sanders Vast Right Wing ConspiracyWill American Democracy Survive the Age of Oligarchs? (10/30/2023)Hard Right Billionaires are Spending Lavishly to Reshape State and Federal Courts (10/26/2023)Oligarchs run Russia. But guess what? They run the US as well Bernie Sanders in the GuardianEven in a Pandemic, the Billionaires Are Winning (11/25/2020)Rich white men rule America. How much longer will we tolerate that? (5/20/2019)Major Study Finds The US Is An OligarchyOligopoly vs Democracy is a struggle repeated throughout recorded history. The iron law of oligarchy "asserts that rule by an elite, or oligarchy, is inevitable " LinksThe One Party Planet: who rules ? Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States:
Emmanuel Saez, UC Berkeley: September 3, 2013 (pdf)
A small number of people, some head petro States, tech titans, large corporate CEOs, own much of the world’s wealth, when that happens oligarchs rule. They spend lavishly on propaganda on a world-wide scale, resulting in authoritarian regimes in Russia, Poland, Hungary, Brazil, Philippines, US, etc. A new axis. Ominous. "To preserve their position of privilege, they frequently fight democracy." Oligarchs want government too weak to do oversight of financial transactions, tax law, offshore wealth, unions, consumer, industrial conditions, labor, ... It seems we are back to a 1929 - like economy, a new gilded age. Scholars agree. The US is a plutocracy. Trump did not win election on his own. He had a lot of help from other oligarchs: Putin, Mercer, Murdoch, Zuckerberg, Koch, Adelson, MbS, and other wealthy GOP campaign donors some of whom went on to cabinet positions. For anyone paying attention, it is obvious that our Congress is no longer responsive to the people. It mostly serves monied interests. Serious academic studies: Gilens and Page of Princeton, Lawrence Lessig’s book “Republic Lost”, Hacker and Pierson in Winner Take All Politics, or Noam Chomsky’s book Failed States agree that Congress responds to funders, not people. The wealthy, including the churches, do not have the same concerns as the great majority: they are not inclined to want healthcare for everyone, good education for all qualified, or strong social programs. They regard extreme income inequality as only natural and will do nothing to remedy it. Instead, they want reduced taxes and minimal social supports. They are militarists, disdain international organizations, and retreat to gated communities, and now want a wall on the border. They are the motivators of the Republican agenda which has no interest in serving the majority of the people. The Constitution, Elections, media, Courts and other institutions are rigged to preserve rule by a wealthy GOP minority. They attack democracy and all of its supports. Our dysfunctional government, run by an irresponsible billionaire elite, a symptom of bad ideas and failure of leadership. Long-term problems are not addressed by the GOP, including the threat of climate change, deteriorating infrastructure, the nuclear danger, market volatility, income inequality, sinking middle class, military-industrial complex, endless war, or election flaws. Concentrated media does not discuss economic fairness even though the US is experiencing pathological, extreme income inequality. Trump is a reflection of a Republican party funded by oligarchs. They are uninterested in policy, expertize, or governing for the well-being of anyone but themselves. The U.S. is an oligarchy with all of the attributes of a Fascist State. Inequality is the result of policy choice, not accident.
Republican policies including the
Reagan and Bush tax cuts,
downsizing of the social safety net, deregulation unleashing
'free-market' forces, privatization,
busting labor unions, restraint of government, Congress'
dependence on funders, and corporate
welfare. It is just as important to have checks and balances on
concentration in private hands as it is in public. Republicans
don't enforce anti-trust law. Any time an oligarch arises in an industry, that is the sign of market failure. Even market fundamentalists should agree that a market is only free when there are many competitors. Corporate concentration is relentless, it stamps out competition, produces oligarchs, and exacerbates income inequality. We may lose our republic thanks to Republicans. (See Supreme Court) Loosely defined, fascism or Feudalism is rule by the very wealthy. The Golden Rule: He who has the gold rules." ... the elements are in place: a weak legislative body, a legal system that is both compliant and repressive, a party system in which one party, whether in opposition or in the majority, is bent upon reconstituting the existing system so as to permanently favor a ruling class of the wealthy, the well-connected and the corporate, while leaving the poorer citizens with a sense of helplessness and political despair, and, at the same time, keeping the middle classes dangling between fear of unemployment and expectations of fantastic rewards once the new economy recovers. That scheme is abetted by a sycophantic and increasingly concentrated media; by the integration of universities with their corporate benefactors; by a propaganda machine institutionalized in well-funded think tanks and conservative foundations; by the increasingly closer cooperation between local police and national law enforcement agencies aimed at identifying terrorists, suspicious aliens and domestic dissidents." It seems relevant that the walled city where the wealthy few live in relative luxury while the masses outside war with one another for survival is pretty much the default premise of every dystopian sci-fi movie that gets made these days, from “The Hunger Games,” with the decadent Capitol versus the desperate colonies, to “Elysium,” with its spa-like elite space station hovering above a sprawling and lethal favela. It's a vision deeply enmeshed with the dominant Western religions, with their grand narratives of great floods washing the world clean and a chosen few selected to begin again. It's the story of the great fires that sweep in, burning up the unbelievers and taking the righteous to a gated city in the sky. We have collectively imagined this extreme winners-and-losers ending for our species so many times that one of our most pressing tasks is learning to imagine other possible ends to the human story in which we come together in crisis rather than split apart, take down borders rather than erect more of them: Naomi Klein, No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, www.noisnotenough.org A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much while so many have so little. the top 1 percent owns 38 percent of the financial wealth of the nation, while the bottom 60 percent owns all of 2.3 percent. A progressive tax system which asks the wealthy to start paying their fair share of taxes, and which ends the outrageous loopholes that enable one out of four corporations to pay nothing in federal income taxes. Senator Bernie Sanders ...changes in government policy, Hacker and Pierson argue, account for the radical change in the distribution of American wealth. This isn't the rich getting richer because they're smarter or working harder. It is the connected getting richer because their lobbyists are working harder. No Political philosophy - liberal, libertarian, or conservative --should be ok with that." Lawrence Lessig: Republic, Lost (p157) ...when Americans with different income levels differ in their policy preferences, actual policy outcomes strongly reflect the preferences of the most affluent but bear virtually no relationship to the preferences of poor or middle-income Americans. The vast discrepancy I find in government responsiveness to citizens with different incomes stands in stark contrast to the ideal of political equality that Americans hold dear. Although perfect political equality is an unrealistic goal, representational biases of this magnitude call into question the very democratic character of our society. Martin Gilens "It should be no surprise that when rich men take control of the government, they pass laws that are favorable to themselves. The surprise is that those who are not rich vote for such people, even though they should know from bitter experience that the rich will continue to rip off the rest of us." Andrew Greeley (Chicago Sun-Times, February 18, 2001) "'The ruling classes have in their hands the army, money, the schools, the churches and the press. In the schools they kindle patriotism in the children by means of histories describing their own people as the best of all peoples and always in the right. Among adults they kindle it by spectacles, jubilees, monuments, and by a lying patriotic press.'" (Tolstoy, Government is Violence - Essays on Anarchism and Pacifism, Phoenix Press, 1990, p.82)
“The American oligarchy spares no pains in promoting the belief that it does not exist, but the success of its disappearing act depends on equally strenuous efforts on the part of an American public anxious to believe in egalitarian fictions and unwilling to see what is hidden in plain sight.” — Michael Lind, To Have and to Have Not
"The ruling elites, the members of the corporatocracy, bear a disturbing resemblance to the shah of Iran and those other dictators we empowered. Unlike the elected presidents, premiers, or prime ministers, they are not chosen by the people, do not serve limited terms, and answer to no one (they profess to report to boards of directors, but they all serve on each other's boards and are mutually supportive). They wield tremendous influence in the halls of both local and national governments. Almost no politician gets elected without money that flows through them and their stockholders. They control the mainstream media, either through direct ownership or advertising budgets." John Perkins book Hoodwinked pg 49
Oligarchy v. Democracy In the Age of a Pandemic
America’s billionaire class is funding anti-democratic forces (5/23/2022) Robert Reich in the GuardianAnand Giridharadas: Stop Spreading the Plutocrats’ Phony Religion (10/16/2019)Why Are Rich People So Mean? Call it 'Rich Asshole Syndrome'—the tendency to distance yourself from people with whom you have a large wealth differential. (9/26/2019)Is America Becoming an Oligarchy? (4/14/2019)Privilege and the ‘let them eat cake’ Trump administration (1/25/2019)Lewis Lapham: Can America Survive the Rule of a “Stupified Plutocracy”? video youtube.Meet the ‘Change Agents’ Who Are Enabling Inequality (8/18/2018)Bernie Sanders: American Oligarchy Keeps Progressive Policies From Advancing (5/19/2018)World's witnessing a new Gilded Age as billionaires’ wealth swells to $6tn (10/26/2017)Why Do So Many Super Rich Despise the Poor? (10/5/2017)The Ethical Bankruptcy of the US Ruling Elites Paved Way for Trump (9/22/2016)New Thinking on Rescuing Our Politics from Plutocrats (1/20/2016)
For hundreds of years rich people have used racism and xenophobia to convince poor people that rich people are not the problem. David Hogg Where there is the possibility of democracy, there is the inevitability of elite insecurity. All through its history, democracy has been under a sustained attack by elite interests, political, economic, and cultural. There is a simple reason for this: democracy – as in true democracy – places power with people. In such circumstances, the few who hold power become threatened. With technological changes in modern history, with literacy and education, mass communication, organization and activism, elites have had to react to the changing nature of society – locally and globally. The Propaganda System That Has Helped Create a Permanent Overclass Is Over a Century in the Making
"The Republicans have a pretty simple philosophy: they say if those at the top have more — more power for Wall Street players to do whatever they want and more money for tax cuts than somehow they can be counted on to build the economy for everyone else. Well, we tried it for 30 years and it didn’t work. In fact the consequences were nearly catastrophic." Elizabeth Warren The people who are risk-averse are the rich, who become like Fafnir in Wagner's Ring. You know in Wagner's Ring, the gold is cursed. The two brothers fight each other over the gold. Fasolt gets killed. And Fafnir gets the gold and what does he do? (From the viewer's point of view for the next 12 hours in Valkyrie and Siegfried,...) In real life, for a long time, until Siegfried becomes mature, he sits immobilized, having turned himself into a dragon guarding the gold. So what was the gold for?" Leon Botstein, President of Bard College.
The priorities of the wealthy and powerful show up not only in the premature focus on deficit reduction, but in the way austerity seems likely to be targeted. A genuine effort to combat long-term deficits would address the myriad ways, documented by Stiglitz and many others, in which the federal government subsidizes economic behavior that has real costs for our society—whether by failing to require companies to pay a tax on their carbon emissions or allowing billionaire hedge fund managers to pay taxes at rates far lower than those affecting middle-class families. Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson ...The Feedback loop between money, politics, and ideas is both cause and consequence of the of the rise of the super-elite. But economic forces matter, too. Globalization and the technology revolution - and the worldwide economic growth they are creating - are fundamental drivers of the rise of the plutocrats. Even rent-seeking plutocrats - those who owe their fortunes chiefly to favorable government decisions - have also been enriched partly by this growing global economic pie. Christia Freeland: Plutocrats.
"Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of the smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights." Einstein on Politics, Rowe and Schulmann. Monthly Review, May 1949.
...modern elites tend to "exercise power irresponsibly, precisely because they recognize so few obligations to their predecessors or to the communities they profess to lead. Their lack of gratitude disqualifies meritocratic elites from the burden of leadership, and in any case, they are less interested in leadership than escaping from the common lot--- the very definition of meritocratic success" Christopher Lasch: The Revolt of the Elites and Betrayal of Democracy 1995 However we look at it, the wealthy few use the relentless mechanism of commercialism to trample democracy, the natural environment, and the common good. Our grievances are many, and the power of citizenship, community, and national pride should be enough to mobilize the population to organize resistance and change." Breaking through power : it's easier than we think: Ralph Nader. "The Triumph of the Corporate Rich," reflects the success of the wealthy few in defeating all of their rivals (e.g., organized labor, liberals, environmentalists) over the course of the past 35 years. G. William Domhoff: Who Rules America ?
The
Billionaire Class won the 2016 Election.
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